This may be a simple confusion for most of us. Coders fight for having a project’s designs and html slices earlier than they can start coding. While, designers may not be available immediately, and investor may still keep on thinking about the website’s layouts.

So, should the coding stop and wait for the designs? Not necessary! If you have your manager analyze the system well, and thinking Smarty in mind, you can go coding without having a project’s designs. But you just have to limit to the basic functionalities of your web application. You can continue working on the coding parts that you have to do, even after receiving the project's design and html slices.

Instruct your designer to externalize the CSS and JavaScripts, as much as possible. (These files should not be used within a webpage, but in different files). Due to the special default delimiters used in Smarty ( { and } ), you should avoid writing these characters in an html file. CSS and JavaScripts contain these characters too frequently.

If coding starts earlier than the slices, it is the coder’s responsibilities to use the HTML IDs, and Classes correctly and explaining them to the designer later on. So, the designer can replace them accurately in the html slices.

If the manager is controlling the coding and designing, s/he can instruct both of them on how to use the name conventions code blocks, and help shape a project without hiccups. When there is a time to mix up the Smarty Templates and Designer’s work, it becomes easy. Plus, you can think of reusable parent templates and components of a template to minimize the time efforts.

Hence, properly organized templating and coding habit does not have to invite a battle between a designer and coder, who should work first.